The United States emerged from the carnage of World War One immeasurably strengthened, both economically and militarily, writes During the Covid-19 crisis, many commentators have talked about a 'new Bretton Woods' and the need for post-crisis international capitalist cooperation and reconstruction. In the fifth in our series on 'war, global crises and working-class struggle', Robin Clapp looks at reconstruction and global relations after the Second World War and the lessons for today.

In a special report that scrutinised the increasingly tense breakdown in geopolitical and economic relations between the United States and China, the Economist sombrely concluded on 18 May that the world has entered "a new kind of cold war."